As Seen by Janine: Eyes of the World Images

03/09/2024

Lots of fishing activity close to our shore the past few days had us wondering. Yesterday, we learned from our neighbors, word is there are shrimp close to shore this week. YAY to Camarones!

It's been an exciting buzz of activity, which is how we knew something was up. Fishermen were setting nets very close to shore and parallel to the beach. This is not typical. They normally run nets from a buoy they set at a moderately deep spot slightly off shore, and then run them straight out from the shore to a deeper area.

This week all the net activity seemed to be very close to shore. It's been fun to watch and video the fishermen's activities, and also the seagulls and pelicans diving for fish. That's been another sign that lots of fish are close to shore right now.

Incidentally, this is the first video I've taken with my new Fuji X-T5 mirrorless digital camera. It is a great hybrid camera, rated to be excellent for both still photos and video. Perfect for me because these days, I love both!

This video was taken using the Fuji 16-80mm zoom lens fully extended. An 80mm digital lens is equivalent to a short telephoto of 120mm on a 35mm camera, so I could see more details of the fishing activity than I see with my cell phone or just watching on my own, so that was cool.

But even more cool is my next video, taken with my new Fuji 70-300mm telephoto lens. With the 300mm setting having a 35mm equivalent zoom of 450mm, the view is awesome! I got some great footage of fishermen pulling their nets in, close up views of Pelicans begging for fish, and the guys setting new nets back out, before they take their catch in the first net to shore. So check back for that video as it has some very nice detailed views.

I'm just learning the features of my new camera and lenses, so I will get better at using the pan and zoom features in videos. I'm also I'm excited to get some beautiful still photos as I miss taking photos as Landscape Fine Art. It feels great to be using a "REAL" camera again, after 2 years using only a cell phone, since losing all my pro gear in the Marshall Fire in 2021. I took my time to research what kind of camera would likely meet my needs and interests and, so far, I'm quite happy with the Fuji X-T5.

But even more cool is my next video, taken with my new Fuji 70-300mm telephoto lens. With the 300mm setting having a 35mm equivalent zoom of 450mm, the view ...

08/15/2023

Wow! My photo of this stunning Landscape and Cloudscape taken near Volcán in July 2013 has hit a milestone of 800,000 views on Google! The photograph was taken on the way from Boquete to Carla Black's Finca to photograph Heliconia flowers. It was my first trip to Panama and my first full day in the country. Seeing these kinds of landscapes and the gorgeous location of the gardens I was on the way to had me in love with Panamá from the start. At that time I'd not known that Carla was the owner of the property I went to photograph. I went with some photography enthusiasts and thought they'd said it was some sort of regional or national park. I had no memory of exactly where it was nor how I could ever return there, and I truly wanted to. 10 years later, now that I'm living in Panamá with my husband, Paul, I was lucky to discover, though a post by Jackie Lange, that Carla is the owner of the private property I had been to. Better still, I learned that my visit there in 2013, the day this photo was taken on the way there, was the one weekend per year in July that Carla opens her property to the public for tours and an annual Plant Sale one weekend each July. I did go last month and will share photos from that trip soon!

05/05/2022

I was very happy to come across this As Seen by Janine Blog tutorial about how I created a stunning wedding album, printed by Blurb Books for Eric and Steph Paciotti, from their beautiful wedding in Louisville, Colorado during the Great Hundred Year Flood of 2013.

http://asseenbyjanineblog.com/tutorials/blurb-wedding-album-book-using-lightroom/

The tutorial has become especially poignant to me, because I lost not only my copy of their wedding album book, but my portfolio of all my older film and slides of a lifetime of photographic work, along with Paul's and my entire home in the Marshall fire.

Our next door neighbor, and Andy Schwartz, who also lost his home and a lifetime of photographic work, recently used his digital files to create a new photographic Blurb Book of some of his work. Paul and I purchased a copy of it and Andy did a beautiful job putting the book together.

I am inspired to do the same and I'm so happy I just came across my blog tutorial detailing the process I used to get accurate color and contrast using Adobe Lightroom and the Blurb book module, when I created Eric and Steph's wedding album.

I want to review my own tutorial, as it's been years, and I will use what I relearn to create my own book of some of my own most treasured photographs from my lifetime. This will certainly help ease the sadness of just how many framed works of art and irreplaceable film negatives and slides I lost. I even lost my first childhood photo album, which had a picture drawn on the front of my first Kodak Instamatic camera. You know the kind with a little square flashcube on the top?!?!?

Of course I lost all my cameras and lighting gear as well, and I'm still trying to decide just how much of my professional gear I want to replace.

But in the meantime I think publishing a book of some of my favorite photographs and some that were the most successful selling as fine art would be a good place for me to start rebuilding As Seen by Janine: Eyes of the World Images.

Perhaps a focus on my favorites of my first home, my beloved Colorado, even as I build my new retirement home in Panamá, with my husband Paul Teixeira. Colorado is where we began our love and our life together, and so I believe the book will likely focus on my favorite photographs of Colorado, but since my tagline is "Eyes Of The World Images" I'll certainly include some from the broader perspective as well.

And maybe I'll purchase another print of Eric and Steph's wedding book because it sure does make a fine portfolio piece! Even though Paul and I miss having Eric and stuff is Neighbors, we are relieved they had moved as otherwise they would have lost their home also, not to mention that both my copy and their copy of the wedding album would have been lost. But they live in Erie now so I'm sure they still have their copy of the wedding album book which makes my heart Happy!

Time to start planning an As Seen by Janine Photography book! As we build a new life here in Panama, and we rebuild our home in Colorado, I want to rebuild my photography portfolio. ❤️ Janine Fugere

03/04/2021

Getting excited about some of the photography that will be available to me once Paul and I retire in Panama. These photos were posted by Kathleen Howard Nature Photographer and she found a really great location that has me aching to take pictures in Panama again!

10/11/2020

Since my As Seen by Janine's Photo Blog is currently the only one of my three websites up and running, I'm enjoying re-reading some past posts. These three posts were great memories to re-read, about photographing student artwork, painted Murals of Character Traits, for Global Leadership Academy, at the request of the art teacher at that time, Amy Brown. This was a fantastic experience, and re-reading all I wrote, about all that went into the planning, the lighting, and all I learned while photographing the Murals alone, and then each Mural with the group of student artists who painted it.

When the art teacher at Global Leadership Academy in Denver, Colorado asked me to photograph an art documentation project, I’d just signed up for The Flash Bus Tour. This was a day-long speedlight training seminar being taught cross-country by David Hobby and Joe McNally, both strobe lighting “g...

10/11/2020

Website Crash Problems, AAACK! My AsSeenByJanine.com website is currently badly "broken" and Paul's and my GrowStrongLLC.com website is "down" with a 500 server error, leaving only my www.AsSeenByJanineBlog.com photography blog online currently. The problems are due to some WordPress and PHP updates which went badly. Thank God I made backups, but restoring is no simple thing....

Anyone who's done their own website or blog, WordPress based or otherwise, knows the horror you feel when your website crashes or gets "broken." Worse still, how panicked you may become when your web host tech support "escalated support team", , in this case, is even struggling to restore your backups. I have three open support cases. Sigh....

in HostGator's defense, much of the trouble seems caused by the fact that I was not good about updating my versions of WordPress, my Plugins, and my Website Theme Templates regularly. Now incompatibility issues & PHP issues have arisen. Thank God I at least backed everything up in my C-Panel before everything went awry. This is always vital when updating a website, especially a WordPress based site. Thankfully, is trying to help me, and I'm ANXIOUSLY waiting for ALL 3 websites to be back!

Much to my horror, both my ASBJ Photography website & my ASBJ Photo Blog were totally "GONE" for almost 24 hours, with 10 years of my life's work vanished. Thank God was able to get those both back up, but the Photo Website is still badly "broken" and in the process of trying to fix my two photography domains, our, GrowStrongLLC.com domain, on a "shared hatchling hosting plan" went down. If it's not one thing, it's another.

My Photo blog is OK, thank God, and my AsSeenByJanine.com website is "UP" but is so "broken" you can't really use it. Grrrrr... GrowStrong was broken for weeks, and the reason I started down the "time to update our WordPress versions" activity, and in about a half hour, one of the great ladies at , got GrowStrongLLC.com fixed and working FINE again yesterday evening. But my photo domains then failed when WordPress was updated, so my case was escalated. The next team of tech support guys tried hard, but when they tried to fix my other two domains today, GrowStrong went down again.

Waaaaaaah..... 2 out of three websites down. I know they are there, I know I have a backup, and Host Gator has several backups. PRAYING FOR MY SUPPORT TEAM TO BE SUCCESFUL.

Meanwhile, this has all given me incentive to revisit my www.AsSeenByJanineBlog.com page, and read some of my most popular posts again. I've been inactive with blogging for several years, but retired from Special Education Teaching this summer, so looking forward to TAKING MORE PHOTOS, and also to BLOGGING MORE ABOUT PHOTGRAPHY!

GO HOST GATOR, HELP ME GET UP AND RUNNING AGAIN ON ALL THREE DOMAINS! PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR ON TOP!

This photo of Great Sand Dunes National Monument and the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range, which I’ve been meaning to work on since Spring 2012, was created as a nine-exposure HDR (High Dynamic Range) image. I’m thrilled with how it turned out, especially because it was my first attempt using a n...